William Brew joins us for an enlightening episode of drumming and discovery. Along the way we discuss his love of the CCM genre, what he really thinks of when he thinks of “space”, and how you get there overnight.

This episode is sponsored by Johnny Flash Productions, a creative agency based in the Washington D.C. area that was founded 16 years ago by John Falke. I took a photoshop class from John a few years back and can’t speak highly enough about the quality of his service. If you have the need, I think you’d really enjoy working with him and be really pleased with the results.

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We are so proud of BYB Podcast contributor, bassist, and uber-dynamic speaker Aron Teo Lee who recently was featured in his very own TEDx talk. “The Right Amount of Wrong” is something Teo talks about all the time when he is producing or co-producing music. It’s a counter-intuitive idea that seems to constantly produce compelling results. Take 15 minutes and be inspired:

If you’ve been to one of our music production workshops, you know how hard it is for the rest of us to compete after Teo is done talking about playing bass, but we do our best 😉

If you haven’t seen this conversation between Bono and Eugene Peterson, it’s worth taking twenty minutes of your time for this loving critique of Christian music from two people who are really trying to contextually honor Christ and the Gospel.

Also, if you’re not aware, Fuller Theological Seminary is really trying to engage with film, e.g. at Sundance, and this is one of their products.

Something that I think would have been helpful to me in my musical journey, was some sort of validation of where I’ve been, where I am, and a hint of what is ahead of me.

This handy chart that I created is one way to break things out, and it’s the way I hear many folks describe their musical journey.

The First Stage is really the beginner stage- when you first pick up your instrument and don’t know a thing about a scale or a chord or a time signature. It’s about acquiring those basics.

The Second Stage is the “doing your homework” phase of musical progression, where you put in your time – maybe even most of your 10,000 hours – to gain proficiency on your instrument. If you don’t love your instrument by this point you get out.

The Third Stage represents a paradigm shift. It’s the first time you start focussing not on what you’re playing, but on what you’re not playing. It’s about creating space for others and responding to what is going on. If you’re copying the record at this point, that’s where your eyes get opened up to what session players are actually doing. They’re not the busy little doodlers we are when we play by ourselves. There is an economy to what they play. This is when we get knocked back by the significance of The Edge when he says:

Notes actually do mean something. They have power. I think of notes as being expensive. You don’t just throw them around. I find the ones that do the best job and that’s what I use. I suppose I’m a minimalist instinctively. I don’t like to be inefficient if I can get away with it. Like on the end of “With or Without You”. My instinct was to go with something very simple. Everyone else said, “Nah, you can’t do that.” I won the argument and I still think it’s sort of brave, because the end of “With or Without You” could have been so much bigger, so much more of a climax, but there’s this power to it which I think is even more potent because it’s held back… ultimately I’m interested in music. I’m a musician. I’m not a gunslinger. That’s the difference between what I do and what a lot of guitar heroes do. —The Edge (1991)

The Fourth Stage is when you’ve moved past trying to copy your influences and you prefer your own voice. This is when you can apply your sound to original material without second guessing yourself. This is also when you might listen to the record, but you don’t need to, because you understand how to serve the song. This level represents the true expert, the specialist in music.

The Fifth Stage is reserved for the very few who are willing to be extremely brave and vulnerable and who continue to distill their voice and find something so new as to be thought of as original. Very often this occurs across genres or it is art that transcends genres. This stage of musicianship is reserved for those who change the way we hear music, and we’re never the same after that.

Once we move forward, we still may step backwards at times so that we can again move forward with a different vocabulary or improved skill set. I think of Rush’s Drummer Neil Peart, already a world class drummer with 14 Albums under his belt, using a traditional rock style of hitting the snare (clearly at the Fifth Stage), who decided in 1994 to back up (to the Second Stage) and learn the looser jazz style traditional grip of playing to find some fresh inspiration, the result of which can first be heard on Test For Echo.

What do you think? Do these stages help you think about where you are in your own musical journey? Are they helpful as you think about the musicians you play with, produce, or direct?

The remarkable thing about this workshop, is that the majority of the kids (I think 60%) had never played an instrument before, and something like 90% of the kids had never played the instrument they were playing for the workshop (they decided to pick up a new instrument). Yet, at the end of just four days they were playing musically, together, as a band. There were a number of times during the “Battle of the Bands” on the last day that our jaw was on the floor with what we were hearing and we experienced actual compelling moments that caused emotion to well up inside. It was incredible.

If there is a thesis to Building Your Band, the podcast and the website, it’s this: you probably don’t need better players or more skills to sound better, you need better production. These kids were teachable, and delivered those goods.

We’re excited to be partnering with Pleasant Garden to produce a Building Your Band Workshop geared toward the next generation of musicians and worship leaders. There is a fantastic panel of musicians lined up to do the instructing, and our curriculum has been refined for a younger audience.

Anyone wishing to host a Building Your Band workshop at your church, please contact us to discuss how we can greatly accelerate Building Your Bands.

Trent Walker talks to us about stepping out in faith- leaving a perfectly good job as a church worship leader to take the show on the road with his wife, Siobhan, and their five kids.

Obviously passionate about the mission of the Church, Trent challenges us in simple but direct ways with profound implications: to put away the music stands and play to a click and in order to better engage with the congregation in our times of worship.

As the frontman and lead songwriter of Break The Fall, Gavin walks us through the process of creating their latest EP “The Wanderers“. From the preproduction writing, to choosing a producer, to packing up a van and driving eight hours to Nashville to record, it’s fantastic to hear the intentionality behind their creation.

Song writers, musicians, band leaders, worship team members etc. . . Look at what instruments you have to work with on your team. Your guitar player doesn’t always have to play all the time, every song, start to finish. There doesn’t always have to be a lead guitar player noodling lead lines and melody riffs. Learn to tell them to lay out a section (Guitarists-learn to be ok with not playing and being told to lay out from time to time, it will make what you DO play sound more important.) Use every instrument on stage to build some diversity in your songs. And start finding new instruments to use to freshen things up. You have options; start experimenting on how to utilize your team members and not just one instrument. Also, dynamics still matter. Learn how soft and full you can really play and actually utilize it when the show/service/performance starts. Retention matters.Posted by Gavin Morris

Steven Krisopher shares what was behind his most recent project, With Abandon, (edit: released December 15th, 2015). With sixty minutes of music in ten songs, he talks about how his desire for this project was to let the songs breathe.

Primarily a pianist, Steven wrote this project on the acoustic guitar and did a textbook rock keyboard/piano treatment, after programming the drums and bass himself. Lots of vocal tracks unite the songs, sung by him and four other vocalists (one of which we talk about in particular). He then mixed and mastered the album, and edited the official video.

Recently we had the opportunity to play music live for a remote Global Leadership Summit event (ours was in Jamaica). When we arrived, the stage was being built (right) and preparations had been made for a high quality rear projection screen, but there was no stage design for the band. We were only told we needed to stay out of line-of-site of the screen. This of course makes sense; the video presentation needs to be center stage, as it’s the main event and the band needs to work around that. However, with the particular stage geometry we were presented with, that was difficult, and sub-optimal. My sense is, there are ways to do this that are better than others. Perhaps Willow Creek has published some best practices and I just haven’t seen them, but in their absence, I thought I would offer some thoughts to get this conversation started.

A single big, bright center screen is nearly always critical in the success of the Global Leadership Summit. Even the most sophisticated churches and conference rooms do not typically have the type of installed projection equipment required to keep the audience’s focus for two entire days (with nearly all of the content being presented by video).

Remember to place the screen as far downstage as possible—while still giving you room for the band, vocalists, facilitator or host. Placing the screen too far upstage will put too much space between the on-screen speaker and your audience.

Keeping the screen as close to the audience as possible will also result in a larger apparent screen size.

So there is a lot of good guidance here.

The way our stage was designed, it was difficult for the band to work effectively and connect with the congregation. We had a very deep stage which forced the band to the back to preserve line-of-sight to the projector. This resulted in much of the stage going unused and did not place either the screen or the band “as close to the audience as possible“.

A shallow stage would be a much better option (below). This would allow a rear-projection screen to be much closer to the audience, and the presence of the band would be greatly improved.

Even better would be putting the screen in front of the band (below). This would of course require front projection and a retractable screen. It would offer a flawless transition in and out of music. The screen could be partially dropped to display the top line of lyrics.

A traditional stage design would be most comfortable to the band, to include putting the drums and bass, and possibly even the keyboardist on risers (as below). This could again be accomplished with a front-screen projection and a retractable screen.

If you have any experience with playing / hosting a remote GLS, I’d love to have you chime in with your thoughts about what works and what doesn’t work. Here are my google slides, which you are free to use, and improve upon! I’ll happily grant you access to edit them as well (upon request). If there are other ideas I missed, or some detail I overlooked, please contact me with that information, and I will update this post, or just leave a comment below.